"Loic" most commonly refers to the Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC), an open-source application used for launching denial-of-service (DoS) and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. It can also refer to the French and Breton male given name, as well as certain fictional characters and organizations.
Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC)
- Purpose: A tool for overwhelming a target server with a high volume of network requests to make it unavailable to legitimate users.
- Malicious vs. legitimate use: While it can be used for legitimate network stress testing, it is most often used for malicious attacks.
- Availability: It was originally developed for Windows but has been ported to other operating systems and has a JavaScript version and a web-based version.
- History: It gained notoriety for its use by hacktivists, such as members of the Anonymous group, in high-profile attack